Father Knows Best
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Jules Crittenden had an excellent essay in the Boston Herald yesterday, that I will be sharing with everyone I know. The full text is below, followed by a link you can circulate:
http://news.bostonherald.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=152575
Psalm 9-11: I will fear no evil
By Jules Crittenden
Boston Herald City Editor
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Do you know anyone whose Sept. 11 fears have returned?
Someone with a sick feeling and a tightening of the chest, bordering on panic?
Someone distraught or perhaps just withdrawn and distracted in the past few days?
What do you say to calm their fears?
We drive each day on highways where the likelihood that a dumptruck will veer into our path far outstrips the possibility that we will find ourselves on an airplane targeted by terrorists. The chances that we will get it in any number of benign but equally deadly ways are exponentially higher than the chances that those who want to kill us will, in any given case, succeed.
Logic is irrelevant in combating these fears, as it is with children who fear monsters under the bed. This is not to disparage these fears. The threat is real. And while statistically remote, there is a factor that elevates terrorism beyond the many mundane fates we all dodge daily. It is the malice.
There are men out there who want us dead. This is undeniable. They want to see us all dead. Each and every one of us. They don’t know our names, they don’t know what our thoughts are about their grievances. They don’t know what our actions are and how we’ve lived our lives. They don’t care. They just want us dead.
I wish I had a sweet, comforting post-Sept. 11 lullaby to sing the ones I love to sleep when they experience fear of these evil men. But I don’t. Lullabies combat false monsters. Real monsters require something different.
Psalms, like lullabies, give comfort. But they don’t mask or deny the threat. They embrace it, and show the way to strength and ultimately comfort from within. What might a psalm say to anyone whose 9/11 fears have been reawakened
Strong, ruthless men and women go long hours without sleep for you. They do everything they can to keep you safe. They are your shield. They will kill for you, and die for you. You can take comfort from that knowledge and draw strength from their example.
But that is not enough. There is something you have to find within yourself. It may be that one day, our shield will fail, and the insidious foe that operates from beyond our borders and even within them will penetrate that shield and kill some of us again.
You must decide for yourself that you will not let them deter you from your path. If they rise against you, you must be prepared to meet them. Prepared to be ruthless in defense of what you love. It may mean that you will die. We all do someday. As a friend of mine who knew what he was talking about once said, it’s not a matter of whether we will die, but how we will die. And when the time comes, the best we can hope for in this life, the one thing we might be able to control, is that we die well.
Each of us must look within ourselves for the strength that pushed the passengers of United Flight 93 forward against their hijackers on Sept. 11, in a successful if tragic assault that prevented further death and destruction.
We must look to the bravery of men such as Rick Rescorla, the British-American security executive and Vietnam war hero who shepherded thousands of people out of the World Trade Center but who stayed back himself with the last and ultimately died in the wreckage.
They are towering figures, but each of us has a little, just enough of that in us that we can draw on, to carry us through. We honor them by endeavoring to live up to their example. It begins by repeating to ourselves the words from which others have drawn comfort in time of war and peril for more than 2,500 years.
I will fear no evil.
http://news.bostonherald.com/columnists/view.bg?articleid=152575
